Do fewer fires in Britain justify rescue service cuts?

A review of England's fire and rescue services has found it could be saving nearly £200 million per year. Firefighters are already claiming that this is nothing more than a cover for cuts. We take a closer look

It must be a Friday: a government report was released that seems to spell out good news for everyone. A document titled 'Facing the Future' set out a dramatic drop over the last decade in the number of fires, fatalities, and related incidents across England.

Good news for everyone – except maybe firefighters, as the report's being used to justify substantial proposed cuts and consolidation in the fire and rescue services.

The independent review, commissioned by Brandon Lewis, the fire minister, finds that there has been "a massive reduction in emergency incidents in the last decade" but also addresses the potential accusation of cuts head-on (if in somewhat obtuse language) by adding:

"I am cognisant of the time in which this review is published, a time of austerity which is likely to continue with downward pressure on public expenditure".

Saying that savings of £196m a year are possible for England's fire and rescue services is no small claim – so we've decided to take a look at how that figure is arrived. Is there really that much less to do?

Lower risks?

According to the report, the fire and rescue services are attending 40% fewer incidents. They published the chart below to demonstrate the trend.

The 15% drop in all fire fatalities does slightly obscure the fact that fatalities from accidental dwelling fires – the 'chip pan' or 'dropped cigarette' fires of family nightmares – fell somewhat less, by only 9%.

Next, we looked at the 'incidents' data in this graph - which, according to the key findings in the report have declined by 40%. Well, it appears that 'incidents' refer only to 'fires'.

But is there a catch?

But firefighters don't only go out to real fires: when a call comes in, they've no way to know if it's a false alarm or not, and of course firefighters engage in other non-fire services, from aiding in road traffic accidents to (apocryphally) rescuing cats in trees.

Expanding the range of incidents to cover fire, false alarms, road-traffic accidents and non-road traffic accidents then the total rises from 473,412 incidents in England in 2003 to 908,927.

Doing the same for 2012 isn't exactly possible as we only have six months of figures, which total 272,000 for the period of April to September 2012.

So, have incidents still fallen? The answer's a slightly unsatisfactory "probably": there could well be more incidents in the winter months than in the summer. But using a simple estimate of 544,000 for the year leaves an overall drop of around 40% in total incidents, not just fires. So it's quite possible the government has a point.

New risks?

But, then again, they might not. Though it's clear that England's fire and rescue services aren't putting out as many fires, that may not necessarily be reason enough to suggest cutting back.

Some of these, such as rescue of persons, animal assistance incidents and lift releases have declined since - but several of these incident types are up.

Take, for example, the 9,200 incidents of flooding which required the assistance of fire and rescue in England over the space of six months - up 75% from the same period the year before.

With meteorologists suggesting that our more turbulent weather is getting harder to predict, it might not be wise to believe that past risk levels accurately indicate future risk levels.

It's also entirely possible that the preventative work carried out by fire services is a contributor to falling numbers of fires – and so cuts could lead to increases.

Cuts have already begun

Sir Knight's report claims that despite "a massive reduction in emergency incidents in the last decade... no similar significant change in the makeup or cost of the service has taken place".

Fire and rescue teams in England will no doubt be keen to point out that from 2007 to 2012, there was an 8% reduction in fire staff and a 5% reduction overall in the number of fire and rescue personnel.

"A fig leaf"

In response to the review, the Fire Brigades Union published the following statement on their website:

The review of the fire and rescue service by Ken Knight is just a fig leaf for slashing our fire and rescue service to bits. David Cameron has promised to protect front line services. That has been exposed as a lie over the past three years as the fire service has faced the biggest cuts in its history.

Do you think this report highlights the paradox of constant resources and declining need or do you think it has cherry picked the numbers? Share your views by tweeting to @GuardianData or @MonaChalabi, or by posting a comment below.